Winning the turf game
In order to look at how to win the turf game, firstly, we should focus on political behaviour. Buchanan&Badham (1999) viewed political behaviour is based on personal ambition, organizational structures that create roles and departments which compete with each other, and in primary decisions which cannot be resolved by reason and logic alone but which rely on the values and preferences of the key actors involved. Conflict is viewed as a critical condition leading to power and political behavior. The sources of conflict are competition for scarce territory—for turf and conflict over incompatible goals. In the same way that conflict can be either constructive or damaging. Secondly, looking at change agent. Change agent can be defined someone who want to use ‘will and skill’ to engage in the political organizational change. Change agent is a skilled political activist, who could support information sharing, joint problem solving and collaborative action planning among a political organizational change. Both internal and external change agent play a lot of distinct characters in enjoying the political change or winning the turf game. In additional, using the appropriate strategies and tactics is meaningful in organizational changes. Minzberg (1987, cited in hall et al.1999) has maintained that there cannot be a single definition of strategy. He argued that strategy is a concept spanning at least five dimensions: plan, ploy, pattern, position and perspective. Buchanan&Badham (1999) made a table of ordinary tactics in organizational change, which are image building, selective information, scapegoating, compromise and rule manipulation. ‘Winning the organization games is about overcoming the barriers, human and organizational, to gaining power in the organization with the minimum of effort and the maximum rewards.’(Von Zugbach, 1995, pp.1-2)
Case analysis: Shuguang Chemical Factory①
Background
Shuguang Chemical Factory, a sulfate chemical company, was founded in 1979. In recent years, it becomes the professional manufacturer of sulfate, food, and medicine series chemical products. By the 1980s and early 1990s, it was a state-owned enterprise. Usually state-owned enterprises (SOEs)② in China offered a generous package of wages and social protection, pensions, heavily subsidized housing, medical coverage, childcare, food, and recreational facilities (Richard, 1996). In 1992, a boom year, output grew 13 percent, and yet two-thirds of Chinese SOEs were loss-makers. Managers had little incentive to resist wage demands because their future promotion to larger SOEs is determined in part by increases in worker welfare during their tenure. Employees were not eager to work efficiently and did not try to develop new ways to produce more products, because of the recession of SOEs (Jeffrey& Woo, 1999) In November 1993, for the first time, the party identified ambiguous property rights as an important cause of the inefficiency of the state enterprise sector, and decided that large and medium-size state-owned enterprises should experiment with the corporate system, and that some small state-owned enterprises could be contracted out or leased; other SOEs shifted to the partnership system in the form of stock sharing, or were sold to collectives and individuals. In 1994, my father Zhou Mingxiong bought that factory. At that time he faced a lot of overwhelming problems:
·How to successfully change a state-owned enterprise into a non-state-owned enterprise
·bureaucracy in management term
·Surplus labor
·Product differentiation
·Modern equipment and manufacturing methods
Strategy
The future looked bleak and, so proved to be the case for many companies in a similar state in the early 1990s in China, the most likely outcome was that they would be out of business. However, he was determined that this would not happen. He believed that the company have a prosperous future, but only if it could be transformed into a modern, competitive manufacturing organization. In order to make that organizational change process running, he got rid of surplus managers, and created a new organizational term responsible to him, which was combined one layer and 5 senior managers. In contrast, the previous director had a 15-senior-managers term. To bring the management term co-operatively together and to tackle the underlying problems, he organized some regular off-site management seminars. This was led by outside organization specialists and some officers in Development Department.
In 1994 there were 130 employees, for that small film it is visible to see inefficient and superfluous labor. He made an alliance with other factories, which was also facing making surplus employees redundancy. An employee in state-owned enterprise shifting into the non-state-owned enterprise could experience a drop in income and security. However employees still wanted to keep their privileges rather than risk the transition to the non-state-owned enterprise. With undeveloped welfare, unemployment means cutting that family’s financial support, so how to make unemployment became the focus of organizational change.
Implementing the strategy
It is unavoidable to make unemployment in order to survive in a fiercer competitive environment. Firstly, he set up a good relationship with local government, for local government they wanted to keep low redundancy rate, but he had to reduce workforce that would make 50 employees unemployment, so how and what was the equilibrium. After two weeks discussion, he agreed to reduce that number to 30. By contrast, the local government would explain the reason for diminishing workforce, and both the factory and government would give those unemployed staffs extra welfare. Secondly, according there was insufficient skilled employees and surplus employees, the management term adopted the local statute for business, which is restricting ordinary employees’ age. For male the restricted age was 50 years old and for female was 45 years old. Alternatively, It was believed that are less vulnerable when it comes to redundancies, having investing a lifetime of service in return for job security. Therefore, the management term organized retirement pension, social security-type pensions and unemployment pension. Now the factory succeed in getting rid of superfluous labor and employed some skilled staffs who had qualifications.
After setting the new management term the form of organization at Shuguang went hand in hand with its move away from corporate bureaucracy to more efficient management. Furthermore without a clear direction which everyone understood and believed in, the factory would fragment and collapse into a disorientated mass of individuals. To avoid that, the management and staff openly discussed and debated the new strategy for the factory. In order to enhance the competitiveness, the factory would make those challenges: developing a distinctive product and industry focus, reducing its cost, improving quality and investing in new equipments and processes. Having established where they wanted to go, the factory now needed to win orders from its target market and establish a long-term relationship with customers. With their hard work and valid organizational change, the factory set itself two objectives: first, to develop distinctive products and new processes by making a business relationship with the Department Of Chemistry of Shanghai University; and second, to exceed the performance of other suppliers. The factory reputation as a reliable and innovative supplier was growing and they were attracting additional work from both existing and new customers.
The new equipment was then installed in 1995,which was imported from Germany. With that efficient machine, in that year the yield increased dramatically. Furthermore, the factory dismissed 15 unskilled employees, alternatively employed 3 engineers.
The outcome
Now the factory produced distinctive products including: diphenolic acid water-solubility colophony, plasticizer, dyeing accessory ingredients and the natural flavor. It becomes the professional manufacturer of sulfate, food, and medicine series chemical products. And products sell to all the area in China, and also to the U.S.A, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Russia and Iran.
Our natural reaction to change, even in the best circumstances, is to resist. How could Shuguang make the political organizational change go along? From that case some tactics were used in the whole process. Firstly, learning form outside change agent. Outside organizational specialists, who have worked in the similar organization for a long year, tend to do what they have always done, that is all that they know. That is where learning from companies outside the organization can have a power effect in getting managers to adopt a whole new outlook. The effective change agent is thus someone with what Minzberg (1983) call the ‘will and skill’ to engage in the political processes if the organization. The change agent joins problems solving and collaborates action planning among the organization (Buchanan&Badham, 1999). Shuguang organized many regular off-site management seminars, talking about the steps of factory’s organizational change, analyzing the organizational gap that was existed in management term even in workshops. Secondly, making networks and strategic alliances. Sometimes, the term inside an organization is generally just not up to getting the tasks at hand done. That’s when the powerful turn to networks and strategic alliances to leverage their power (Dilenschneider, 1994). To be able to create multiple networks, Shuguang set up management network, products design network, and then established strategic alliances with other suppliers, even make a tactical network with local government. To sum up, Knowing what you need, building your networks one by one based on what you can contribute as opposed to who you want to use. Subsequently, getting employees involved in problem solving. Having a simple problem-solving process gives staff a common language, a routine to follow. Employees in a company could feel part of the factory when they recognize the problem solving in business (Drennan, 1992). In Shuguang the managers and staffs openly discussed and debated the new strategy for the factory. By that encouraged all employees to regard theirselves as parts of factory. Finally, leadership is another function to make organizational change. Change will always cause discomfort and dislocation and staff involved will look to their immediate manager or leader for recognition, guidance, and support - that's why the ability of these frontline leaders will make or break a change initiative (Illingworth, 2001,p30). From that successful political organizational change, it demonstrated that the director of Shuguang have already established a good leadership. Leadership must be seen to be present through the alignment of managers' actions with the leader's vision. What leaders say must, in the end, result in actions that drive an organization forward (Gautier, 1999,p10). With that leadership the factory has been bringing about significant organizational changes in management term. The creation of that process was not just an attempt to create a more efficient method of distributing products. It was also seen as a key element in creating a more entrepreneurial culture in Shuguang.
Conclusions
The most effective way to make political organization change is to put people in a new organizational context that imposes new roles, responsibilities and relationships on them. Organizational change needs to focus on the political incentive and behaviour, rather than abstractions such as particular strategies and tactics.
Mann (1986) separated organization with political organization, ideological organization, economic organization and military organization. Each of them implies distinctive forms of sociospatial organization by which humans can attain a very broad, but not exhaustive, package of their myriad goals. However, Buchanan&Badham have systematically laid out a paradigm for the political analysis of organizational structure and processes. They have attempted to integrate power, politics and organizational change. Change Management is a political turf game. Buchanan and Badham clearly defined the relationship between power, politics and organizational change. They also not only deeply illuminated the political behaviour, which is the natural consequence of ambition, organizational recruitment, appraisal, training and promotion policies, even of retribution and revenge, but also explained the individual, decisional and structural roots of political behaviour. Furthermore, they regarded change agent as political entrepreneur, who is willing to attend the organizational change with power and influence. Change agent has the ability to figure out how and what organization should change, and then use their skill to get things done in their fancy way. From their splendid and honest theory, it is seemed that political power plays a principal role in organizational change.
①Shuguang Chemical Factory website:
②SOE, COE, TVE
In China, an SOE is a nationally owned enterprise; the central government is the ultimate authority for the enterprises' operations and the disposition its assets, even though the SOE in most cases has been assigned to the provincial or county government for supervision and management. The nonstate enterprises are those in which the central government lacks final authority over the disposition of assets. The nonstate sector consists of community-owned (collective-owned) enterprises (COEs), cooperatives, individual-owned enterprises, private corporations, and foreign joint ventures. COEs are owned by all the residents of the city, township, or village, and cooperatives by a small group of persons. The most prominent type of nonstate enterprise is the community -owned enterprises in the rural areas, known as township and village enterprises (TVEs).
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